HOLLY AND MISTLETOE

by Susan Mallery

  "Spare me the details."

  Her spine straightened. "All right. Have it your way. I was seventeen, and Earl Haynes seduced me. There, I confess my crime. Are you happy? What I did was wrong, I admit that. I knew he was married." She was silent for several seconds. "I'm not proud of what I did. My only defense is that I was naive."

  "He had a wife and four sons. Did you ever think about what your so-called innocent affair would mean to us?"

  She flinched.

  Jordan fought to keep his anger flowing. He didn't want to feel anything for the woman in front of him. Not compassion or empathy.

  "He said no one would ever know."

  "There's an excuse."

  "I'm not excusing, I'm explaining. I was so young."

  He folded his arms over his chest. "That's it, then? You were young? Don't you want to declare undying love for my father?"

  Her blue eyes darkened with regret. "I didn't love him Jordan. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but it's the truth. You can say whatever you want, but none of it will be more ugly than what I've already said to myself." She drew in a deep breath. "It was twenty-nine years ago. Maybe it's time to let it go."

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he said. "But there's so much more to the story."

  For the first time she looked frightened. "What do you mean?"

  "I told you I knew everything. I know that you left town nearly thirty years ago. I know you were pregnant and that you had a child."

  Louise's eyes fluttered closed. He suspected if she hadn't been sitting, she would have swooned. As it was, she swayed on the sofa.

  "No," she murmured. "No. Not now. Not after all this time." She covered her face with her hands.

  "What happened to the child?"

  "Adoption."

  He'd expected as much. Even so, the single word shocked him. There was another Haynes in the world. A half sibling he didn't know.

  He glanced at Louise. Her shoulders shook, and she rocked back and forth, but she was silent in her pain. Jordan found he had to turn away.

  He'd expected to enjoy this conversation. He'd rehearsed it a thousand times in his mind. Louise had always been broken and crying, begging forgiveness. But he didn't feel any satisfaction. Lives had been destroyed, and it was too late to bring back the past.

  "I've been punished enough," she said. "You have no right to discuss this with me. What happened between your father and me was a mistake, but no one ever knew. I'm not responsible for the destruction of your family. Earl Haynes did that all on his own."

  He turned back toward her. There were tears on her cheeks, and for the first time she looked every day of her forty-six years. "That's where you're wrong. Seventeen years ago you came back to Glenwood, and my father got in touch with you."

  Her mouth opened. "No," she breathed.

  "Yes."

  "No. I mean, Earl contacted me, but I wouldn't have anything to do with him. I was older. I'd learned from my mistakes. Jordan, I swear, I refused to even talk to him. I wasn't interested in having a relationship. He was married, and even if he hadn't been, I would never have trusted him."

  "Too bad you didn't make that clear."

  "What?"

  "You should have told him you wouldn't be interested even if he were single."

  "I did."

  "He didn't believe you."

  She frowned. "What are you talking about?"

  This time Jordan didn't have to search for the anger and pain. It swelled up inside him, fueled by ugly wounds left over from a childhood fraught with hurt.

  "My father was convinced you would want him if he wasn't married. Because of you, he asked my mother for a divorce."

  "That's crazy."

  Jordan curled his hands into fists. "After twenty-five years of screwing everything in a skirt in a fifty-mile radius, after twenty-five years of being a complete bastard to my mother and beating the crap out of his kids, my father wanted a divorce. So he would be with you."

  Louise stared at him wide-eyed. "I don't believe you."

  "You damn well better. I was there. I heard everything."

  She shook her head. He didn't know if she still didn't believe him or if she didn't want him to continue. He didn't care which; he was determined to finish his story.

  "After he asked for the divorce, he left. My mother stood in the kitchen, her home for the last twenty-five years, and she started to laugh." He shuddered. "I still remember the sound," he added softly.

  It had been horrible. He'd been sixteen, just old enough to believe he couldn't cry anymore or ask for comfort.

  "Jordan, I—"

  He cut her off. "She left. She packed her bags that afternoon and left. I begged her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. She said we were all old enough to take care of ourselves, then she was gone." He glared at the woman sitting on the sofa. "She never contacted us again. Not a phone call or even a letter."

  "I'm sorry," Louise said as a tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt any of you."

  "That's not good enough."

  He walked over to the fireplace and stared at the unlit logs. He was filled with conflicting emotions. In a small corner of his mind, he felt compassion for Louise. She had been young, and she'd gotten in over her head.

  She should have known better, he reminded himself. If she hadn't slept with a married man, none of this would have happened. He poked and prodded his anger until it flared back to life.

  So many lives ruined. Hers, his mother's, his brothers'. "What happened to the child?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I never saw her again."

  Jordan froze. For one intensely agonizing second every cell in his body screamed in pain. Then he sucked in a breath, and the moment passed. But it left him weak and shaking.

  "Her? You had a girl?"

  "Yes. Why is that surprising? Oh, Lord. You can't really believe that family curse, can you?"

  The Haynes curse. No female child had been born in four generations. Until Travis had fallen in love with Elizabeth. Until Kyle had fallen in love with Sandy. Haynes men who love their wives have girls. Haynes men who love the one they're with have girl children. Louise had a girl.

  The son of a bitch had loved her. Really loved her. He'd never loved his wife. Jordan doubted his father had cared about his sons, either.

  His chest tightened, and it was hard to breathe. He turned on his heel and left the room. Once in the foyer, he didn't know where to go, so he stepped outside, onto the porch.

  The night air nipped at his skin, but he didn't care about the cold. At last he could draw in a breath. He exhaled a steamy cloud of air. The front door closed, and he heard Louise's footsteps on the wooden floor.

  "I'll pack my bags and be out of here by morning," she said.

  He wanted her gone but it wasn't an option. "No. You can't go. I've kept this secret for seventeen years. If you go, I'll have to explain. I'm not going to ruin everyone's holiday by confessing all now. Besides, if you left, Holly wouldn't be comfortable staying here with me alone. I want her to have one good Christmas. I want you to stay until after the first of the year."

  "Fine."

  He couldn't tell her emotional state from that single word, but he didn't care what she was thinking. Even though having a daughter wasn't her fault, he blamed her for that final insult.

  He heard the front door open, then Louise spoke. "I was only seventeen," she said. "I made a mistake. I didn't know what I was doing."

  "You knew enough to destroy my family."

  She sucked in a breath. "You're never going to forgive me, are you?"

  "No."

  "As quickly as that? You don't even have to think about it?"

  He didn't answer.

  After a moment she said, "It must be nice to always be right. You obviously get a lot of satisfaction from that. I've been wrong lots of times, but then you already know that. Tell me something. What's it like never to make a mistake? What is it like to know there i
sn't one single thing you're ashamed of?"

  Louise didn't wait for an answer. Instead she went into the house and closed the door behind her.

  Jordan stood alone in the cold. Somewhere out there was his half sister. He didn't know anything about her, and she didn't know anything about him. She didn't know that she was a Haynes, and that was a lucky break for her.

  He tried to imagine what she would look like. She must be – he did some quick calculations – twenty-eight. Only a couple years younger than Kyle. They had a little sister. He hoped she'd had a better life growing up than the Haynes brothers. He hoped there had been parents who had cared about her.

  He held on to the porch railing and wondered what he was supposed to do now. After the New Year, Louise would leave. She probably expected him to tell his brothers all he knew, but he wouldn't. It was her secret to keep or give away. He didn't care what she did as long as she got the hell out of his life.

  * * *

  Holly stared into the darkness, but sleep would not come.

  She glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. Finally she gave up and threw back the covers.

  The corner of the blanket hit Mistletoe's butt, and the cat murmured a sleepy protest. Holly petted her in apology, then pulled on her robe and slippers. If she couldn't sleep, maybe some milk or an hour of pacing would help.

  She crossed the room and opened the door, then stepped into the hallway. The house was silent, a contrast to the noisy thoughts swirling through her brain. It had been wrong of her to listen to Jordan's conversation with Louise, but she hadn't been able to help herself. She'd been heading upstairs when Jordan had told Louise to stay the hell out of his life. Holly had climbed to the top of the stairs, then sunk down on the landing and eavesdropped. She'd heard everything, except whatever they'd said when they went outside.

  She didn't know what to think. At last Jordan's anger made sense. He'd been sixteen when he'd found out the housekeeper had had an affair with his father, and that the affair had led to the birth of a child.

  A baby. Holly pulled her robe tightly around her and hugged her arms to her chest. Fierce longing filled her. It was probably the result of the afternoon spent with Jordan's sisters-in-law, all of whom had children.

  When Holly reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw a light coming from the study where Jordan slept. She hesitated, not wanting to intrude but wondering if he was in pain from his strenuous day.

  She crossed through the library, then stopped at the open door to the study. Jordan was sitting up in bed. He was holding a book but staring off into space rather than at the pages. He didn't notice her at first, and she took the opportunity to study him.

  He wore sweats, and the loose-fitting clothing merely hinted at the strength concealed beneath the soft fabric. Lines of tension straightened his mouth. Undiluted pain filled his eyes.

  "Jordan?"

  He glanced up at her. Instantly his expression shuttered.

  A second before, she'd been able to read his soul; now she didn't even know what he was thinking. She recalled Rebecca's claims that Jordan was a loner, always on the outside looking in. For the first time she believed that might be true.

  "You're up late," he said, putting the book on the bed.

  "I couldn't sleep." She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her robe. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

  He turned his dark stare on her. "Why wouldn't I be?" He was a cool stranger, and that frightened her.

  "You were gone a long time today, and I was concerned you might have overdone things physically. Are you in pain?"

  He closed his eyes briefly. "No."

  She wondered if she should leave or risk staying. The cowardly part of her said running wasn't a bad idea, but her compassionate nature won out. She settled on the overstuffed chair next to the bed.

  There wasn't an easy way to say it, so she just blurted it out. "I was standing on the stairs. I heard everything."

  He opened his eyes, but he didn't look at her. Instead, he stared at a place behind her left shoulder. Not a single twitch of a muscle gave his thoughts away.

  "Jordan?"

  "It doesn't matter," he said. "It was a long time ago."

  "Of course it matters. There are so many unresolved issues. I'm sorry you had to carry this around for so long. It must have been hard for you."

  He didn't respond.

  She drew in a slow breath. "You know, it's not all Louise's fault."

  He grimaced. "Being female, you would take her side."

  "That has nothing to do with anything."

  "If it's not her fault, then whose fault is it?"

  "Louise deserves some of the blame, just not all of it."

  "How convenient of you to take care of assigning blame," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you divide it all up, then let me know how much is mine, how much hers and how much belongs to everyone else? After all, you are such an expert on relationships."

  His words pelted her like sharp stones. She felt the individual blows, even though she would bear no physical scars. This Jordan was hard and ugly. She didn't like him or trust him. But she still cared about him, so she stayed in her seat.

  As if he read her mind, he looked at her and gave her a weak smile. "Sorry. I don't mean to be such a bastard. There's a lot going on, and it's tough to talk about. You can't understand this situation, Holly. You're too innocent."

  "As innocent as Louise was when this first happened to her?"

  The smile faded. "One point for your side."

  She felt his pain and tried to ignore her own. "Jordan, this isn't about points, or winning and losing. It's about life. You've got to come to grips with this. Not for Louise, but for yourself."

  "You don't know what the hell you're talking about. If she'd just slept with the old man, I could have understood that. He was a first-class bastard, and he would have enjoyed seducing schoolgirls. I doubt Louise was the first or the last. But that's not all she did. She should have just stayed away. Instead, she had to come back. She returned to town and destroyed my family."

  His rage was a tangible creature, living and breathing in the room with them. Holly gathered her courage. "It sounds to me like your family was destroyed long before Louise came back to town."

  "We had problems. Everyone does. But if she hadn't come back, my mother wouldn't have left. Now Louise is here, in everybody's lives. I hate that. Every time I turn around, she's at another family function."

  "She's not hurting anyone. She takes good care of the family. What's wrong with that?"

  "She's playing us for fools."

  "No." Holly leaned forward and clasped her hands together. "She cares about everyone in the family, even you. She loves the children."

  "Love." Jordan laughed harshly. "It will be the death of us."

  A coldness swept over her. "What do you mean?"

  "This love you're so proud of only destroys. If you'd asked my father, he would have said he loved his sons. The beatings were just to keep them on the right track. He loved his wife. So what if he fooled around? He slept in his own bed every night. That made things okay. His father and uncles, his brothers, even his grandfather had done the same thing before him."

  He paused for a moment and leaned back against the hospital bed. "You want to hear about love? Craig loved his first wife, Krystal. She was an alley cat, but he didn't know for years. She was just like our father. She came on to each of his brothers. It scared us, and we never told him. Krystal claimed she loved Craig. Supposedly she loved her boys, although she managed to leave them and never once visit them after the divorce. Love destroys everything it touches."

  Holly didn't know what to say to him. Her first instinct was to tell him he was wrong. Love didn't hurt. But it had hurt people in her life. Her mother had loved her father, and he'd let her down. Even when she was dying, he couldn't be bothered to help.

  Holly knew love sometimes did hurt. Like when her mother had died. But there were good sides to love. Sh
e'd had wonderful times with her mother.

  "Sometimes love is worth the risk of hurting," she said.

  "You really believe that?"

  "Yes," she said. "What about your family? You care about them."

  "One exception in a long, ugly list of rules."

  She studied his face. He was tired. She could see that in the shadows under his eyes. She wished she could make him feel better. "We're quite a pair," she said. "You believe love hurts, and I'm afraid to trust anyone."

  Like love, trust was a risky business, but when it worked, it was worth the potential for heartbreak. Did she believe it enough to convince him of that?

  "I wish I had the right words to make you feel better," she said miserably.

  "That's not your job. I'll be fine."

  She thought about the sixteen-year-old boy who had learned ugly family secrets. He'd said he'd kept them to himself, and she believed him. He'd carried this burden for a long time. She didn't agree with his need to blame Louise, but she understood where the impulse came from.

  "You're exhausted," he said. "Go to bed. I'll be fine."

  She shook her head. "In a minute." She rose, then perched on the edge of his mattress. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  "You have nothing to be sorry about."

  She didn't tell him she was sorry for him. He wouldn't want her pity or her understanding. Instead, she told him without words. She leaned forward and rested her head in the crook of his neck, then wrapped her arms around him.

  He didn't respond in any way. She continued to hold on to him, willing him to accept her comfort. Bits of the evening's conversation filled her mind. He'd carried dark secrets for too long. She wanted to help him, but he wouldn't let her.

  Her eyes burned, and she tried to force back the tears. One escaped. Before she could brush it away, it fell on his neck.

  Jordan grabbed her arms and set her away from him. He studied her face, then reached up and touched a tear. "I'm not worth even one of these," he said gruffly.

  "You're wrong. You're worth so much more."

  He muttered a curse, then hauled her against him. She settled against his strength and held him tight. How alone he must be, this man who refused to believe in love. How alone she was, a woman who refused to trust. Would they ever be able to take that leap of faith, or were they destined to spend their lives searching for the one thing they feared to claim?